Many Chinese who grew up with the fantasy stories from the 16th-century literary classic Journey to the West have pondered the same question: Why do the evil spirits and monsters who capture Monk Tang—whose flesh is believed to grant immortality to those who eat it—insist on steaming him before consumption? The time spent waiting for water to boil gives the Monkey King, Monk Tang’s disciple, time to rescue him and defeat the monsters.

Luo Gang has asked himself just this. The co-founder and vice president of the restaurant chain Zheng Liu Ji from Liuyang in central China’s Hunan province, Luo thinks he’s found the answer: “Because steaming is the most nutritious way of cooking,” he says jokingly.

Compared to stir-frying—which is more common in Chinese cooking—“Steaming requires less seasoning, such as cooking oil and salt,” Luo explains to TWOC. It also requires less heat—stir-frying is typically done at between 200 and 300 degrees Celsius, which can destroy nutrients.

Scientists also endorse steaming as a healthier method. Professor Fan Zhihong of China Agricultural University wrote in Press Digest that steaming “retains nutrients the best,” unlike boiling or blanching, where nutrients may dissolve, or stir-frying and deep-frying, which add excess oil and fat.

In Luo’s hometown of Liuyang, everything is “steamable.” With plates or bowls of raw ingredients and seasoning placed in stacked steamers over boiling water, the region’s signature dish takes its name from this cooking method—zhengcai (蒸菜), which directly translates to “steamed dishes.”

Zhengcai has rapidly developed over the past three decades, driven by the migration of Liuyang people across the country. Many opened zhengcai restaurants near factories for migrant workers. Zhangjiadian, a small village in Liuyang, has been dubbed the “steamed dish village,” with around 100 households opening zhengcai restaurants nationwide in the past decade, according to Liuyang Daily. Hunan-based media platform Rednet reported that there are now about 20,000 Liuyang zhengcai restaurants across the country, generating over 20 billion yuan in annual sales in 2022.

The cooking method has gained popularity beyond Liuyang’s migrant workers, attracting young urban office workers seeking convenience, affordability, and healthier options—especially amid ongoing reports of unsanitary pre-made meals in restaurants and food delivery platforms. With the industry expected to keep growing, zhengcai appears poised to become China’s next culinary trend.

But can steamed food truly carve out a share of the market from the timeless stir-fry, which remains a staple in Chinese dining for its bold flavors, deep cultural roots, and increasingly competitive pricing?

Legend has it that Liuyang’s steamed dishes—recognized as a branch of Hunan (or Xiang) cuisine—emerged in the 14th century, when wars broke out between rebel leaders Chen Youliang (陈友谅) and Zhu Yuanzhang (朱元璋), who later founded the Ming empire. Many Hakka people from Guangdong, Fujian, and Jiangxi provinces migrated to the mountains of Liuyang and invented this less-smoky cooking method to hide their traces.

However, archaeological findings suggest that the history of steamed dishes dates back over 3,000 years, long before the Ming dynasty (1368 – 1644) and Journey to the West. A set of steaming apparatuses known as yan (甗), featuring three steamers linked side by side to allow multiple dishes to be steamed simultaneously, was excavated in 1976 from the tomb of Shang dynasty (1600 – 1046 BCE) queen and general Fu Hao (妇好) in Anyang, Henan province. Also in the 70s, three steamed dishes of loach and various kinds of fish, plus douchi (豆豉), a fermented black bean sauce indispensable for Liuyang steamed dishes, were unearthed from Western Han dynasty (206 BCE – 25 CE) tombs in Changsha, the capital of Hunan, which governs Liuyang today.

While the cooking method has traditionally been used around the country, Liuyang, along with Tianmen of Hubei province and Changshu of Jiangsu province, are recognized as the “hometowns of steamed dishes” by industrial organization China Cuisine Association, for their long history, distinctive regional flavors, and current market share.

Liuyang steamed dishes stand out from other regional varieties with their use of local douchi, tea oil, and chili peppers. Luo explains that the tea oil adds a special, delicate aroma, while the chili pepper and fermented soy sauce enhance the overall taste. “[Liuyang zhengcai] values taste over appearance, ingredients over cooking techniques, with douchi and chili pepper as souls, and offers a lasting aftertaste,” he says.

Despite its disputable exact origin, eastern Liuyang, an area collectively called Dongxiang (“eastern town”) has been commonly regarded as the regional food’s birthplace. Ding Chunlan, a Liuyang local working in the finance industry, grew up having steamed dishes daily at her mother’s Hakka family in Dongxiang. Now in her 50s, Ding has noticed the growing popularity of zhengcai in households throughout the city, including her father’s family in Beixiang (“northern town,” where people dined more on stir-fried dishes before), over the past several decades. “For a typical meal, we would steam two dishes with rice, and then stir-fry another two dishes,” she tells TWOC. “It’s convenient and timesaving…It also requires little cooking skills, except preparing the material and seasoning.”

Luo also believes that its convenience is the exact reason why Liuyang people have adopted this cooking method for generations: “Liuyang people are hardworking. They would go off to work on the field early in the morning and let the rice cook in the steamer. By noon, they could just throw in some simple vegetable dishes and have lunch in no time.”

The restaurateur harnessed the time-efficient nature of this cooking method and applied it strategically to his business. “Steaming is the easiest cooking method for standardization among all Xiang cuisine branches,” says Luo. In his more than 200 stores in Hunan and neighboring provinces like Guangdong and Jiangxi, there are no professional chefs. Instead, employees follow strict recipes, simply placing ingredients—delivered daily from a central kitchen in Liuyang—into the steamer and adding seasoning according to the prescribed measurements. Vegetarian dishes are steamed for 10 to 20 minutes, while meat dishes take 20 to 40 minutes.

Instead of cooking dishes upon order, zhengcai restaurants often prepare them in advance in large quantities and store them in large insulated containers, ready for diners to pick and enjoy. These ready-cooked dishes are typically available in single servings known as xiaowancai (小碗菜, small bowl meals), providing consumers with more variety in one meal. The model, now adopted by most zhengcai restaurants, including Zheng Liu Ji (established in 2015), has fueled the rapid growth of this regional cuisine.

“There were lots of dishes in small bowls for you to choose from…You could have a decent meal of three dishes at the cost of only 20 yuan or so,” recalls Liu Xiangling, who worked in Changsha over a decade ago. “The stereotype that steamed food is bland is also not true.”

After moving to Hong Kong in 2017 and then settling in Shenzhen, Liu has grown accustomed to making zhengcai herself, customizing the material and seasonings to her own liking instead of adhering strictly to the Liuyang style. Liu now runs a WeChat public account called “Delicacies by Rice Cooker,” and has noticed a growing public interest in steamed dishes: Most of her more than 20,000 fans followed in the past two years, and posts titled “all in one pot (一锅出)” for “wage laborers”—tutorials of using the rice cooker to steam rice with trays of dishes above—typically receive over 100,000 views. The majority of her followers, she says, are young college students and workers in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Shanghai who want convenient, affordable, and healthy food.

A growing number of people have even adopted steamed foods as part of their fat-loss diet. On the lifestyle app Xiaohongshu, there are more than 100,000 posts about “all in one pot” steamed dishes for fat-loss diets, filled with praise of them being “cheap” and “delicious.” Restaurants specializing in low-calorie foods, also known as qingshi (轻食, light food), charge an average of 40 to 60 yuan for a single dish, according to a report from Sina News last year, while a Xiaohongshu user with the handle “Little Get-lean Diet” shares that six homemade steamed dishes, even with meat like shrimp, chicken, and beef, cost only around 100 yuan.

Luo’s business is also thriving. Despite a slump in the catering industry last year, “We’ve grown by 20 percent,” Luo says, attributing the increase to healthy products, competitive pricing driven by efficient, standardized operations, and alignment with the government’s anti-waste policy. “We’re meeting people’s basic needs. At the average price of 20 to 30 yuan per person per meal, anyone can afford it.” The franchise is now preparing to expand to more cities, including Hong Kong, and even overseas to Singapore and Malaysia.

While zhengcai works well within the fast-food model, it’s struggling to break out into larger and higher-end restaurants, where more elaborate dishes and traditional cooking methods still dominate. Many businesses still hoping to cash in on the trend, such as the popular Hunan restaurant chain Xiaoxiangge from Beijing, have opted to simply add a few more steamed dishes to their menu.

When searching on the major food delivery platform Meituan, only two restaurants in Beijing included “Liuyang” or “zhengcai” in their names, and both of them were opened within a year. A manager at one of the restaurants surnamed Xie tells TWOC that they had worried this market might be too niche to survive. While the restaurant is doing well, they have to offer fancier versions of steamed dishes, such as pork or other meats coated with rice flour, which take over an hour to prepare and are priced higher. “Most consumers would order a steamed dish at around 100 yuan,” Xie tells TWOC. In Xie’s restaurant, stir fry still dominates.

“Even now, when you go out and see many places with ‘zhengcai’ on their signs, it’s possible that 70 to 80 percent of the dishes inside are actually stir-fried. The market’s acceptance and understanding of stir-frying is much deeper; people naturally associate eating vegetables with stir-frying. So, the crowd that specifically seeks steamed dishes is still smaller than those who prefer stir-fried dishes,” Luo, from Zheng Liu Ji, admits.

While steaming vegetables and pork may not guarantee immortality like the steamed flesh of Monk Tang in Journey to the West, it remains a valuable home cooking skill to incorporate in today’s stressful and fast-paced life. “You and your family will benefit from it your whole life,” says Ding, the Liuyang local. “They’re nutritious and timesaving.”